Melee or guns stealth?Either way, it's less useful because the targets tend to be unaware and not moving (or not moving fast), which makes them relatively easy to hit.There's still a maximum VATS range, regardless of PER. And IMO, it's pretty boring to stroll through the game making silenced VATS head shots at guys at ranges that are far outside of (their) detection range.

The Bethblog provides footage from the X-Play special report on Fallout: New Vegas, featuring Chris Avellone, Larry Liberty, Josh Sawyer and Joe Sanabria.

Gamespot wants you to get caught up with some of the powerful new perks in Fallout: New Vegas in this special report.

Fallout: New Vegas will be a new stand-alone game powered by the Fallout 3 engine and developed by California-based Obsidian Entertainment--a studio that's home to several of the developers of the original Fallout and Fallout 2. But New Vegas will, as the name suggests, take the adventure to Sin City, where the glitzy neon signs light up even the postapocalyptic wasteland. Along with the new story, new characters, and new quests, New Vegas will offer new perks--powerful attributes your character can pick and choose after gaining a few experience levels that improve your performance with the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (VATS), grant you bonus action points (AP) in combat, and more. New Vegas will be released next week, but you can see the game's new perks, along with explanations from associate producer Tess Treadwell, lead producer Larry Liberty, and tech producer Jason Fader, right here.

And last but not least, Big Download interviewed Obsidian's associate producer Tess Treadwell.

How was the game's skills and character leveling systems changed compared to Fallout 3?

You'll still level up the same way, but we've balanced a lot of skills, and tried to make them all useful. One skill change some people have noticed is that we've rolled Small Guns and Big Guns into a single "Guns" skill. There's also a new "Survival" skill that affects how useful some items are, and allows you to craft items at campfires. You can also now use Magazines to give yourself a temporary skill boost, so if you fail a skill check somewhere, you won't necessarily have to wait until you've leveled repeatedly to take another crack at it.